Fifty years is a long time for any relationship. When a marriage hits the half-century mark, the celebration is called a “golden anniversary.” But when a band makes it through five decades—of living on the road, continuing to release relevant material, keeping up a unified public image and maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships—it’s a small miracle.

As such, Jeff Hanna, singer, guitarist and co-founder of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, doesn’t resist too forcefully when music writers call his L.A.-bred, folk-rock group “legendary.”

“We’re happy to embrace that when anybody wants to tag us with that moniker,” Hanna says with a laugh. Speaking over the phone from his home in Tennessee, the 68-year-old Hanna figures his band may actually have earned the title. And, at any rate, he is “thrilled and proud” to have made it this far. “It is a significant milestone for anything—especially in this business. The highways are littered with debris of bands that didn’t last.”

Hanna started the group with singer-songwriter and guitarist Bruce Kunkel in 1966 in Long Beach. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band began as a very “primitive” acoustic-only folk outfit, Hanna says, recalling how he and his fellow band mates bonded over the work of Americana legends, like Earl Scruggs and Maybelle Carter, as well as surfing. “We were a surfing jug band,” Hanna says. “All of us were surfers.”

And when he says “all of us,” Hanna has a lot of names in mind. Bernie Leadon, a founding member of The Eagles, played with Hanna for a time. And Jackson Browne was even in the band for a couple of months.

The band would go through multiple style changes through the years—picking up more electric instruments, taking a run at commercial country radio and then settling into a more straightforward rock & roll sound. However, many know them for their sprawling, generation-spanning 1971 record, May the Circle Be Unbroken, which found Hanna and his cohorts—most of them under the age of 25—playing with their heroes, including Scruggs, Carter, Doc Watson, Merle Travis and more.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band play The Mountain Winery in Saratoga next Wednesday. Those who can’t make it out to the show—which Hanna promises will include songs the band hasn’t played live in more than 30 years—may be able to catch an upcoming broadcast of the PBS special the group recorded late last year. “Check your local listings,” he says.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Jun 22, 7:30pm, $40-$70
The Mountain Winery, Saratoga

For the past two weeks, the Montalvo Arts Center has been the host of the OneBeat international music consortium and residency program. Montalvo has served as a temporary home, recording studio and performance space for 25 musicians, aged 19-35, from all over the world. They’ve come together to share the musical traditions of their respective cultures with one another, write and record new music, and discuss strategies for using that music to make the world a better place.

The former home of James D. Phelan—who served as the 25th mayor of San Francisco and a U.S. Senator from California from 1915 to 1921—Villa Montalvo is the site of the Montalvo Arts Center, a privately owned, non-profit organization dedicated to the development of the arts, literature and music.

OneBeat culminates in a music festival this Sunday, in which the artists will play a series of shows in various rooms and outdoor spaces around Montalvo’s grounds, before gathering for a larger ensemble concert in the Garden Theatre. Over the course of the day, attendees will be able to roam the 175-acre estate—dropping in on the more intimate performances, chatting with the artists and enjoying food from a variety of on-site food trucks.

It’s all part of an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs called OneBeat, which one of the program’s organizers describes as a “musical exchange”—a way to create a meaningful dialog between countries and perhaps even lead to better international relations.

“It’s a form of cultural diplomacy,” says Jeremy Thal, co-founder of OneBeat. “It’s a powerful way for people to really understand where others are coming from, both from a personal perspective and a political perspective.”

And that’s why Thal believes the Department of State has a vested interest in the program. “They are looking for creative ways to bring about peace and teach understanding throughout the world,” he says. The U.S. government attempts to achieve this goal in many ways, such as setting up embassies around the world and sending high-ranking officials to global summits.

OneBeat has a different approach, Thal explains. “They call it people-to-people diplomacy.” By connecting these musicians and allowing them to work with each other and develop organic and authentic relationships, the hope is that they will return to their countries of origin not just with some great new music, but also with a greater appreciation for other cultures. “We feel the common humanity, across political barriers, or simply become aware of the creativity, the ingenuity and the beauty that’s coming from other people in other countries.”

By way of example, Thal recalled a relationship that was forged at last year’s OneBeat between a Nigerian and a Russian. According to Thal, the Nigerian said he had the impression that all Russians were “cruel and serious.” That is, of course, until he connected with a “hilarious and good-humored” Russian beat-boxer. “He will be changed forever,” Thal says of the Nigerian musician. “He’ll take that experience back to his community and be able to broadcast it through his network and his artistic life.”

And with musicians coming to Montalvo from Russia, Cuba and Iraq, it’s not hard to imagine how the assumptions of the American participants might be challenged—and vice versa.

Kelly Sicat, director of the Lucas Artist Residency Program at the Arts Center, says she and the leadership at Montalvo feel that OneBeat is an important project that should be supported.

“It’s about understanding and respect,” Sicat says, echoing Thal’s beliefs. “I think (music and the arts) gives us an understanding of our commonality. I think it gives us an understanding of who we are as humans. I think the arts are a very important part of our cultural life—of our humanity.”

Whether OneBeat succeeds in affecting positive global change it’s sure to be a good time, according to Thal. “It’s a lot of fun.”

The OneBeat music festival will be held Sunday, Oct. 19, 11am-4pm. More info.

Brian Regan, who plays at The Mountain Winery in Saratoga this weekend, always re-ties his shoes before walking onstage. After all, it would look really unprofessional if a shoe came off in the middle of his performance.

It’s a mundane ritual, but mundane is gold for Regan. The veteran comedian has made a career spinning witty observations out of the minutia of day-to-day life—the preposterously detailed nature of DMV handbooks, or a driver on his cell phone who thanks the comedian for allowing him to merge by raising a lone pinky finger from his handset. Even something so banal as lacing-up can be turned into a punchline.

“In that sense, I’m also an incredible athlete,” Regan says of  his pre-show protocol. “I’m sure Peyton Manning also re-ties his shoes.”

Regan’s 25 years of touring as a standup comedian have always held to a clean, observational humor that highlights the absolutely ordinary. No props or gimmicks—just stories from a father of two who grew up in Miami and likes to play golf (but is “terrible” at it).

“I’m an everyday Joe Blow on stage,” Regan says. “I’m of the people.”

Regan says he draws inspiration from the “average human experience in our culture,” and likens his style of comedy to a Magic Eye poster. “There’s just this weird pattern but you have to keep looking and looking and see there’s a dinosaur,” he says. If you examine any one thing long enough, absurdities will inevitably present themselves.

Regan got his big break when he landed a gig at a comedy club in Ft. Lauderdale. Before long he was living in New York and working to earn his stripes. In the years that followed he was named “Best Club Comedian” by the American Comedy Awards and became a regular on the Late Show with David Letterman. Since 1995 he has made 26 appearances on the program. In 2012, he was one of the first guests booked on Jerry Seinfeld’s web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Though he is known for his animated facial expressions and energetic standup sets, Regan says he doesn’t try to be “the life of the party” when he’s not performing. “When I’m not on stage I like blending into the wallpaper,” he says. “I like to be able to not be funny sometimes.”

Brian Regan performs at The Mountain Winery in Saratoga on Aug. 24 at 5:30pm. More info.

Maceo Parker has played with some of the most iconic and eccentric personalities in music history. As James Brown’s sax man, he helped write the rules of modern R&B. As the musical director of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, he led a sonic revolution in the ’70s. As part of Prince’s band, he’s helped him become one of the most in-demand live acts of this century. He’s worked on projects with everyone from Keith Richards to Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction.

The question is: how does he do it? How does he collaborate with pop’s oversized personalities without setting off a war of egos?

Duh, he’s Maceo.

“I’m easygoing,” said Parker by phone after winding up his extended New Year’s Eve duties. “I’ve got a real long, long, long, long chain before you get me out of my thing. I’m just one of those guys, I’ll open the door for you, you can go in the elevator first. If there’s a long line of cars, I’ll stop and let you in. I just do that.”

If Parker’s cool runs deep, it has also spread wide. “One of the things I never envisioned really is so many parents naming their kids Maceo,” he says. “Man, all over the world, I’m telling you. It’s crazy, really crazy. There was one time I had three little Maceos on stage. One of the left side of the stage, one in the center, one on the right. None of them knew each other, but they were all Maceo because of me.”

Parker has been recording with his own various bands off and on since the early 70s, winning a “Jammie” for Best Jazz Album in 2009 for his most recent album, the Ray Charles tribute Roots & Grooves.

When he comes to Montalvo in Saratoga on Wednesday, he brings a reputation for transcendent live shows that can stretch on for hours. He’s so known for epic partying he had to do four straight nights through New Year’s Eve last month, at Yoshi’s in San Francisco.

“People know what we’re going to bring, they know what we do. You’re going to get your party on, your dance on. That’s what we’re about,” says Parker. “I’m there for the people. They made a choice to come where I am, and I want to make it really worth their while. I’m there trying to give one hundred percent.”

It’s a work ethic that was certainly impressed upon him at a young age; he was only 21 when he started playing with Brown in the ’60s. Though the soul and funk icon was a careful arranger, he also relied on his legendary sidemen like Parker and trombonist Fred Wesley to keep his sound cutting-edge.

“When it came to ‘Maceo, time for you to blow,’ then I had to play what I hear, which is what is inside of me,” he remembers. “It was exciting, it was a little challenging. But then again, it wasn’t that much, because I was just playing me. Fred used to say ‘Man, I never seen anybody wake up out of a deep sleep and play as funky as Maceo.’ It’s all natural.”

It was a bit of a culture shock when he hooked up with Clinton’s spaced-out, psychedelic P-Funk crew, but he quickly made his mark.

“I really cherish the time I was with him. It was like a cult kind of thing, the following. It was cool, but coming from James Brown it was like ‘Whoa! Whoa! No, you can’t say that! No, you can’t do that! You can’t dress like that! You have to wear some kind of shoes. C’mon!’ I’m telling you, man, I was really thrown. Like, ‘what in the world is going on?’”

Parker has drawn from all of those experiences, but when he got the chance to set his own musical agenda, he discovered as a bandleader that the sound he really wanted to channel wasn’t so different from the one he had started out with in the first place.

“I’ve always had my concept of how I want to do it. It sort of resembles James Brown a little bit, because let’s face it, that turned out to be me, too,” he says. “It was James Brown, but it was also me.”

Rather than end up what he calls a “jack of all trades, master of none, “ he pushed his funk-based sound as hard and far as he could.

“That’s what I set out to do, and that’s what I did,” he said. “I guess it shows.”

Maceo Parker plays Wednesday, Jan. 11, at Montalvo Arts Center at 7:30pm; $44/$49.